Day 52 -- Paris

Saturday, 27 October 2023

Another rainy day. 

After more than 50 days in France, I figured I should get a nice, fresh baguette from the bakery (boulanger) around the corner. I had one a few days ago from a grocery store (Carrefour), and it was good, but this one was much fresher.

My first fresh baguette, from La Pralinoise

I then headed to lunch at O'Papa. I had been looking at this place for a week or so -- and enjoying the wonderful smells while walking past -- and I was nervous about having to order at a sit-down restaurant. But this is my last chance, so I'm gonna face my anxiety and make it happen. It's billed as a barbeque place, but I think that might have been a translation issue. They focus on meat, but not necessarily barbeque style. They close for the afternoon, so I made sure to get there at lunchtime. 

I had the mixed grill, which included butter beef, marinated chicken, merguez sausage, and a lamb chop; and mashed potatoes; and a boursin cheese sauce. And homemade bread.

The mixed grill at O'Papa

You know what they say about saving the best for last? Well, I did so inadvertently. After over seven weeks in France, this, on my last day, was the best meal I've had. Fantastic meats, fantastic sauce, fantastic potatoes, fantastic bread, and fantastic service. If I was in France long enough for another meal, I would come right back here tomorrow.

After lunch I walked more, finishing several streets on the L'Île-Saint-Denis, and a few in Saint Denis. (Eight more streets completed.)

Houseboats on the Seine

I timed things to get to the Basilica of Saint-Denis in time to spend a bit of time there before heading to the nearby stadium for the final match. The basilica contains the tombs of nearly every king of France from the 10th century to the mid-19th century. I got close enough to see the building, but the Rugby Village was in the way. I figured the entrance must be on the other side, so I walked about three-quarters of the way around the building before hitting a wall. I backtracked to just about where I started, and found that the entrance was, indeed, contained inside the Rugby Village. Quite unexpected.

I got inside only to find that the tombs were already closed. I thought I had another hour. I either misread their website or their website was in need of updating. The attendant was very nice, and we were able to figure out that I had relied on a travel review site that had their summer hours listed without mentioning that the hours varied seasonally. All I got to see was the main room (the nave) of the cathedral.

The Basilica of Saint-Denis, with the Rugby Village in front of it

The nave at the Basilica of Saint-Denis

It was still an impressive building, but missing out on much of the historically significant part of it was disappointing. I wish I could remember the travel site that didn't mention the seasonal hours so I could suggest an edit. [I found it later. UrbanInsider.com. I've left a comment suggesting they not publish the hours, and instead direct people to the official site to get the most accurate information.]

I spent some time wandering around the Rugby Village and then walked the last kilometer or so to the stadium to meet Justin and his family before the New Zealand v. South Africa match.

The town hall of Saint Denis

After the match, I walked back to the hotel, arriving well after midnight. I've got to get up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

...doug

Day 51 -- Paris

Friday, 27 October 2023

A pretty slow day today. I spent the morning watching snooker. There's something cosmopolitan about watching an English guy play snooker against an Irish guy in a tournament in China, with the announcers speaking German, all from a French hotel.

I also watched part of the Northern Ireland Open. If you like snooker at all, you should watch the match between Shaun Murphy and Marco Fu.

In the afternoon I walked around. Some in Saint Oeun, some in Saint Denis, and some on an island in the Seine -- L'Île-Saint-Denis. I tried to access the closed street from the other end of the construction zone, but it had barricades and gates and signs. I'll just mark it as inaccessible in Open Street Map, and once the update flows through to City Strides, along with a few other updates marking some streets as private, that should get me to 100%. (Eventually the construction will finish, the sidewalk will open, and someone will edit the street to again be accessible. But until then, I'll be at 100% for Saint Ouen.)

I then headed to the stadium early for the Argentina v. England match. You can find the full details in the match writeup, but I ate at Wilson's Grill on the way, and then met up with Justin and some of his family at a bar before the match.

Chicken tandoori sandwich

Justin and family

...doug

Day 50 -- Paris

Thursday, 26 October 2023

Still kinda rainy, but let's try the Louvre again. I tried to get online tickets last night, but the earliest day that they are available is the day I leave. So I'll just get there earlier than yesterday and see what the line is like. This time I took the Metro to the stop nearest the Louvre. The no-ticket line is quite a bit shorter than yesterday. Maybe 100 people. It took about 75 minutes to get to the front of the line. And it would have been several minutes faster if not for the guy who just walked up to the front of the line, about three people ahead of me, and asked the clerk a question. And then just stayed there! And waved at his family to come up and join him. 

The lines. Not as bad as yesterday

Once in the building and past the security gate, I was able to buy a ticket at a kiosk and then it was time to figure out my way around. Unlike the Lille Zoo, the Louvre is large enough that there isn't a series of arrows on the walls to ensure that you see it all. The only significant guidance signs I saw were pointing the general way to the Mona Lisa (Joconde in French.) I spent about five hours in the museum, only leaving as they were closing up and kicking everyone out. I would guess that I saw about a third to half of the rooms, and for many of them, it was just a cursory walkthrough. You'd need ten to fifteen hours to even glance at everything, and likely twice that to have enough time to read most of the descriptive cards. (Many of the cards were in both English and French, but quite a few were in only French.)

I managed to see both The Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Mona Lisa just by wandering around.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace

The Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa has a set of ropes in front of it to guide people up to within about ten feet of it. I skipped that line and just looked at it from across the room, and from about twenty feet away on a diagonal. Good enough.

There were a number of other paintings and statues that I recognized, but wouldn't have known the names of. Gabrielle d'Estrées and One of Her Sisters was one. The Coronation of Napoleon, The Astronomer, and Liberty Leading the People are others.

The courtyard, as seen from one of the upper wings

A number of the works in the Louvre are classified as Recovered Artwork. Tens of thousands of pieces were looted by the Nazis during World War II. After the war, many that were recovered were not able to be reunited with their rightful owners, so the Louvre is acting as caretaker for several hundred. The descriptive cards are marked with an MNR (Musées Nationaux Recuperation, or National Museums of Recovered Artwork) number and there is hope that the pieces can still be returned to the proper hands.

As time was running out -- they hadn't made any announcement yet, but I knew that closing time was only about twenty minutes away -- I realized that I hadn't yet seen the Venus de Milo. Maybe it isn't at the Louvre? I looked it up on my phone and found which wing and floor and room it was in. I headed that way and got there just as they were starting the closing announcements.

Venus de Milo

Then it was a matter of finding the exit. You've heard of the cliché of "Exit through the Gift Shop"? Well, in the case of the Louvre, they not only take you through the museum's own gift shop on your way out, but the exit also then dumps you into the Carousel de Louvre underground shopping mall, where you have to weave past a few dozen stores before you get back to the street. 

At the top of the last escalator on the way to the street level, a few teenagers stopped and stood still after taking about one step off the end of the escalator. That caused the older couple right in front of me to stumble and almost fall before I helped them move to the side to get around the clueless folks. People were starting to get stacked up, so I mumbled (OK, it was louder than a mumble) "Bad place to stand. Top of an escalator here. Move along." at the kids. In English. But I think the tone conveyed the message well enough. A guy nearby gave me a smile that made me think he spoke English, or at least could tell what I was doing. The kids moved just enough that the rest of the people from the escalator were able to get by them. Yeah, that's enough peopling for today.

I checked Google Maps for nearby places to eat. Ahh, there are two Thai places within about a mile and a quarter. They are two different locations of the same restaurant -- Khao Thai. The farther one explicitly lists massaman curry on the menu, while the nearer one has a "peanut curry". Maybe the same thing, but maybe not, so I headed for the farther one. It was just a block off the main street (Rue de Rivoli) in a little side alley. Very quaint.

Chicken satay at Khao Thai Sévigné

Massman curry at Khao Thai Sévigné

I had the chicken satay appetizer and the massaman curry. Fantastic! As good as any Thai food I've ever had.

I walked a few more blocks to the Place de la Bastille. It's where the Bastille prison was before it was destroyed during the French Revolution. There is a tower there now, called the July Column.

♪ They put a tower up on a piece of land, where the evil prison used to stand 𝆕

Then I walked across a few more bridges over the Seine, and along the Île Saint-Louis -- another of the Seine's islands -- on my way back to a Metro station. Took the Metro back to Saint Ouen and then a short walk back to the hotel. 

I completed twelve streets in Paris today, but none in Saint Ouen.

...doug

Day 49 -- Paris

Wednesday, 25 October 2023

This is the least rainy day all week, so it's time to see some of the sights in Paris. I took the Metro to one of the stops along the Champs-Élysées. I had noticed that the Rugby Village was at the Place de la Concorde, which is at one end of the Champs-Élysées. While the Rugby Village wouldn't be open -- they mostly open on match days -- the World Cup store would be open. So I walked over there and browsed for a while. If I'm gonna buy anything, it makes sense to do it now, near the end of the trip, so I don't have to haul it with me all over France. I picked out a shirt with the logos of all twenty teams, and a pair of socks with the Rugby World Cup 2023 logo. 

Then I headed south through the Tuileries Gardens (too late in the season for there to be much to see there) to the Louvre. 

The Louvre pyramid. And the lines

Because I had good success at the Eiffel Tower last week without buying a ticket in advance, and because I didn't know at the start of the day that I would even go to the Louvre, I didn't have a ticket. I found a line for "people with tickets" and I got in the other line. After a while, an employee came by and said "you all have tickets, right?". I asked her where the line was for the unfortunate souls who didn't have tickets and she pointed me to a third line on the other side of the courtyard. Off I went to that other line. After about 30 minutes I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation (in my head, of course; it was raining too much to use real paper) and figured that I had another one-and-a-half to two hours left in line. By that time, the Louvre would only be open for another hour or so. Ugh.

Let's see if I can get online tickets with my phone. Oh, wait. My phone hasn't been working since I tried to use it on the Metro to double-check what stop I wanted. Apparently even though I still had plenty of gigabytes left on my Travel Europe SIM card, they are only good for 30 days after adding the data. And they don't give any warning. So not only can't I get an online ticket to get in a shorter line -- not that the other lines were much shorter; but they were moving faster -- I'm also going to get to spend the rest of my day in Paris the old-fashioned way -- sans Internet.

Bah! I'll do the Louvre another day. Let's see what else is close. Oh, yeah. No phone. I remembered that the Saint-Chapelle chapel and Notre-Dame cathedral were close. Just up the Seine on an island. I walked over there and found that although Saint-Chapelle has an option to get in without a prepaid ticket, they had met their quota for the day and had closed that line. A few more blocks to Notre-Dame then.

I expected that Notre-Dame would be closed. They are still doing restoration work after the big fire of 2019. But it was still impressive just looking at it from the outside.

Notre-Dame Cathedral

Notre-Dame Cathedral

The south side of Notre-Dame, showing where much of the work is being done

Plus, they had a nice presentation about the fire and the damage and the restoration work on the construction wall around the building. 

As I was about to leave, I saw a sign for an archeological crypt. It was down some stairs under the plaza in front of Notre-Dame. It turned out to be an underground museum. When excavating the area to build underground parking, they found a bunch of ruins from the early days of Paris. Back when it was Roman -- and called Lutetia. They stopped work on the parking garage and preserved the area. The museum was half about the history of Notre-Dame and half about the history of the early days of Lutetia/Paris. Complete with preserved city walls and building foundations. I didn't take any photos, but they've got a few photos and a video on their website.

My phone had cached enough mapping that I was able to notice that the Shakespeare and Company bookstore was nearby. Frances and Tinca suggested that I go there if I was close. Well, 120 meters as the crow flies is pretty close. Let's go!

Shakespeare and Company is a small, English-language bookstore, right in the heart of Paris. So small, in fact, that they usually have a line outside, and only let one person in for each person who leaves. Otherwise it would get too crowded to even move around inside. I only had to wait for about ten minutes -- about ten people -- to get in, but I've seen photos where the line was much, much, longer. Inside it was a really quaint place. A lot like the Antiquarium in Omaha. They don't allow photos inside, so you'll just have to guess what a warren of small rooms with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves looks like. As long as I was there, I might as well buy a book. Again, it's late enough in the trip to not have to carry it much longer. So I bought a Jack Reacher novel (by Lee Child and brother Andrew Child) that I didn't already have -- No Plan B. As I started to read it later in the day, I realized that "English-language bookstore" doesn't necessarily mean American English. The first thing I noticed is that the book uses single quotation marks for quotations, and double marks for nested quotations. I figured it was just a quirk of the author or the editor, even though I hadn't seen it in any previous Jack Reacher novels. Then I saw that they spelled "tire" as "tyre". And then I saw that they called a parking lot a "forecourt". Yep. British English. That just makes it extra cool. 🙂

I paid cash for the book, to make sure I had coins for the laundry later today. They offered to stamp their logo inside the front of the book. I accepted the offer.

After Shakespeare, I headed back to the Metro. My walk took me across the Pont Neuf -- the oldest bridge in Paris. It also took me right by the US Embassy. I didn't have my passport on me, so they presumably wouldn't let me in. But I was tempted to go up to the gate and ask if they had any advice about "How can I make my mom worry less?" 

And on the topic of worry: Everything I can find says to be careful, be aware, and if you find yourself in an area with protests, walk away. I'm doing all those things; and haven't seen any protests. There are no indications from the US State Department that there are any places to worry about. And a lot of talk that France knows what they are doing and are applying good practices to keep things under control. BBC and German news channels also agree.

Looking southeast along the Seine, toward the Île de la Cité and Notre-Dame. That's the Pont Neuf connecting the island to each bank

The Arc de Triomphe, as seen from the center of the Champs-Élysées

I took the Metro back to Saint Ouen and walked around to make progress on a few more streets. Big M Burgers for dinner. 

Big M Burgers

The burger was nothing more than a fast-food hamburger. Very much like a McDouble. It was the first meal in the entire time here that was disappointing. Not bad, just ... blah. All the other burger places were ... well ... burger specialty shops. Not simple fast-food joints. I expected this would be, too. 

After dinner I walked a bit more. I went to the road along the Seine that is under construction to see if I could walk along it outside normal working hours. I got close, but then the security guard got out of his car and told me that the street was closed and that I was not allowed to walk along it. I'll have to update the mapping database to indicate that it is temporarily closed to pedestrians.

Sunset over the Seine

Back in the hotel, I was able to use my laptop to order another slug of data for my travel SIM. That'll last the rest of the trip.

Time for laundry. I couldn't figure out how much money to put in the coin slot. I'll just put coins in until something beeps or lights up. But none of my coins would fit. I had quite a variety of denominations, and they were all too thick. I went to the front desk to ask about it. It turns out I'm supposed to pay at the desk and they give me a token. The token fits in the machine, being a different size -- thinner -- than all euro coins. I guess I hadn't needed to deal with re-enabling my ATM card after all. 🙂 I did a load of laundry. When I went back down to transfer it to the dryer, I noticed that my little box of detergent pods (I had purchased the smallest box the grocery store had, which was still 19 more pods than I needed) had fallen off the washing machine from the vibration. And the washing machine was bolted down, with not enough room for me to get behind it. But the handle from the weight machine in the gym in the next room worked to fish out the box. I wrote "Free / Gratuit" on the box and left it on a shelf near the machines. No sense hauling them all the way back to Omaha.

On one of the elevator trips while doing laundry I talked to a guy from London who has just moved to Paris for a new job. His apartment isn't ready yet, so they're putting him up in a hotel for now. 

I completed fourteen more streets today, but only one of them was in Saint Ouen.

...doug

Day 48 -- Paris

Tuesday, 24 October 2023

The past two days, my ATM card didn't work. I don't typically need cash, but I'll need a little bit for the laundry in the basement of the hotel. I should only need one more batch of laundry, but I only have about two euros of cash and coin left. The ATMs displayed "this action isn't allowed by your institution". That's odd. It worked a few weeks ago, and I told my bank I'd be in France through the 29th. I opened a support case in the mobile app yesterday and they replied that there was a fraud notice that they asked me about, and because I didn't respond, they blocked my card. They couldn't unblock it via the in-app support, so I'll have to call them. But they are only available during US business hours, so I'll have to wait a while.

What to do while I wait? I know -- I'll walk more of Saint Ouen. I started out by trying to see if I could get to the riverside road that is closed for construction from some other approach. I could get close, but I didn't find a way to get to the sidewalk. There might have been a way if I went through one of the homeless encampments along the Rue Terneaux, but I decided against that.

I worked through some more parts of Saint Ouen. A few streets that are marked as valid walkable streets on the City Strides map turned out to be private gated alleys. I'll update them on openstreetmap.org later. 

I ended up going by the Notre Dame church again, and this time I got a photo of the embedded steel rails that they have for their gate wheels to ride along. Presumably to avoid wearing a groove in the stone.

Rails for the gate wheels

Detail of a gate wheel and a rail

I was starting to get hungry at about 4:30 p.m., so I looked for restaurants that were already open. Nothing spoke to me, but a promising pizza place -- Fino Pizza -- opened at 5:00 p.m., so I kept walking and timed it to get there around 5:10 p.m. Alas, they were still closed. But there was another pizza place not much further along that was open -- Emir Pizza. Delicious!

The nour pizza at Emir Pizza

The walk back to the hotel after dinner got me to about eleven miles for the day, so that was enough.

I called my bank and after a bit of a hassle proving who I was -- they wanted to send a text message to the same US number that prevented me from getting the fraud alert in the first place -- I got authenticated and they unblocked my card. [I found out later that it wasn't even my US cell phone that they sent the fraud alert to. They left a voicemail on my work phone. I'll need to get that straightened out later.]

All that walking amounted to 43 more streets completed, 37 of them in Saint Ouen. Only about 30 left.

...doug

Day 47 -- Paris

Monday, 23 October 2023

More walking around. I headed first to the east side of Saint Ouen for lunch. When I find an Indian place in France called Marie Curry, I can't resist. Awesome name, and fantastic food!

Marie Curry

Chicken vindaloo at Marie Curry

Several intersections around town have these statues of kids at the corner. To help remind drivers to be aware of pedestrians. Much like Omaha's "Keep Kids Alive -- Drive 25" signs.

Zoé

After lunch I headed to the cemetery to see if the old section was open, or if I could figure out what the signs said. If it is permanently closed, I can update Openstreetmap.org to indicate that and the streets will be removed from CityStrides. But if it is open even one day a week, I'll have to figure out when I can walk those streets.

The doors to the old part of the cemetery are still closed. Hmmmm, but are they locked? ... Yep. 🙁 There is a sign -- let's see if I can figure out what it says. Something about "for access, see the attendant behind you". So I walk over to the new part and find the attendant in the gatehouse. I asked him if the old part is closed. He said that yes, it is closed. His English was only a bit better than my French, but I managed to ask him if it is permanently closed, or only on certain days. "Oh, you want to get in?" "Yes, please." "Oh, I can unlock it for you." 

He grabbed his umbrella and walked across the road with me. He unlocked the door in the wall. As I walked through the door, before he closed it behind me, he said "Just ring that bell when you want to leave and I will come over and unlock it for you." And then he locked the door. And that's how I got locked in a cemetery. 

Inside the wall of the old part of the cemetery. The door (right) that the attendant unlocked for me; and the bell that I should ring to get "released"

As I walked around the old cemetery I contemplated what would happen if the attendant went on a break when I wanted out. Or if the bell didn't work. Or if he had a heart attack. The wall was nine or ten feet high. I didn't see any gaps. It didn't appear to have any protrusions that I'd be able to climb easily. No sign of any ladders. I guess I'll climb that wall when I get there.

I found another monument for several members of the Guy family. Probably not the inspiration for the Fox sitcom, but perhaps Seth McFarlane also walks around French cemeteries. Let's see if a close zoom makes it readable.

Famille Guy

Famille Guy

I finished the streets in the cemetery and rang the bell. The attendant let me out promptly. No need to figure out a way over the wall after all.

I walked some more of the area near the cemetery, then went back to the hotel for a while. Later in the evening I walked some more streets.

I completed 28 more streets of Saint Ouen today, and a few in the neighboring towns. 70-ish remaining.

...doug

Day 46 -- Paris

Sunday, 22 October 2023

No rugby match today, so I explored more of Saint Ouen.

Started out by walking to O'Tacos just across the border into Paris proper. On the way I went past a cool little skate and bike park under the freeway.

Skate and bike park

And a construction site where they have taken up the stones that pave the street and put them in bags while they work under the street. It's the picture I'll have in my head from now on whenever I hear the phrase "Dumb as a box of rocks." 

Bags of rocks

The "One Spicy" French taco at O'Tacos

Then back through more of Saint Ouen to finish up some more streets.

Our Lady of the Rosary Church

I completed 43 streets today, 32 of which were in Saint Ouen. Ahead of pace to complete the city. Under 100 remaining, with six days left.

...doug